By David Crabtree, Midlands Correspondent
A mother and stepfather who starved and beat their four-year-old son to death have been found guilty of murder.
Daniel Pelka was the victim of an "incomprehensible cycle of cruelty and violence" which left him looking like "a concentration camp victim" before he died of a head injury in March last year.
Magdelena Luczak, 27, and Mariusz Krezolek, 34, who arrived from Poland in 2006, had denied subjecting Daniel to a campaign of punishment which reduced his weight to only 10.7kg (24lbs) by the time of his death.
The jury reached a unanimous verdict in under four hours and the pair will be sentenced on Friday.
Detective Inspector Chris Hanson, from West Midlands Police said: "We are very pleased with today's verdicts and that the perpetrators of this rather gruesome crime are behind bars.
"It was a wretched murder in my opinion. Daniel was treated so cruelly by both of his parents who betrayed the ultimate trust.
"They were supposed to look after Daniel and didn't. This was a prolonged, pre-planned and pre-meditated murder of this little boy and they have worked together to achieve that.
Daniel was forced to take food from other schoolchildren "They turned Daniel who was a beautiful little boy into a bag of bones basically. They beat him and left him on his own in a room for two days, to die on his own."
The court was told that Daniel was imprisoned in a room with the door handles removed, fed salt when he asked for a drink, deprived of food and forced to defecate in his own bed.
Further cruelty involved being submerged in a cold bath and sent to school with only half a sandwich in his lunchbox.
He was so desperate for food he would steal from other lunchboxes at his school in Coventry. Other children had to lock their food away.
Staff said he picked up muddy and dirty pancakes from the floor, ate out of bins and even tried to eat beans which had been planted in soil as part of a school experiment.
His stepfather was accused of checking Daniel's stomach for swelling when he arrived home from school to discover whether and how much he had eaten.
Dr Karen McLachlan had told the court that over a 30-year career she had never seen a child so emaciated.
"I think most of the jury will have seen pictures of children and adults who have been victims of concentration camps, that's what Daniel looked like."
She added that Daniel's ribcage and hip bones were sticking out. Skin was hanging in folds from his thighs and arms.
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